AgGeorgia Farm Credit, a Georgia based agricultural lending cooperative, has announced that dividends totaling $13,630,305 have been declared by its Board of Directors, with receipt by members anticipated the first week of April.

This marks the 30th consecutive year the cooperative has returned profits to its members through its Patronage Refund Program, with over $348 million in cash being paid out since 1988. The refund consists of more than $4 million in cash and over $9.5 million in allocated surplus, with the surplus portion to be used to maintain the capital position of the cooperative and returned to members at a later date.

“Not only are we proud that this year’s distribution is over 21% larger than last year’s, reflecting the health of the association, but we are also excited to be celebrating a milestone of 30 consecutive years of distributions to our borrowers,” said AgGeorgia CEO Jack Drew. “We know how much these distributions mean to our farmers and rural Georgia, and AgGeorgia’s history of returns speaks to our long-standing commitment to share profits with our borrowers.”

The returns have been not only consistent, but greatly decrease AgGeorgia members’ cost of borrowing.

“The patronage refund reduces our members’ cost of borrowing considerably, this year lowering the average member’s stated rate by 1.53%,” said AgGeorgia’s CFO Carrie McCall. “For every dollar of interest expense accrued by our borrowers in our general portfolio in 2017, 27 cents is being paid back to them.”